


Frogs, Witches, and Naturalists: the impact of human displays of affection on the physical presentation of spelled individuals

by TheSilentOtaku



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: Ai is a biologist, Alternate Universe, Descriptions of a magic forest that are too detailed for their own good, Fantasy, Forests, Frogs, Gen, Magic, Reiji is a baker, Utapri Secret Santa 2019, oc is a witch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21919567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSilentOtaku/pseuds/TheSilentOtaku
Summary: Ai didn’t exactly believe in fairy tales. He believed in magic, but not fairy tales. And he believed in science. Which, if you didn’t know enough about both of these topics, would seem quite the contradiction.As a self-proclaimed naturalist, Ai had dedicated his life to studying the flora and fauna of the forest. He knew much about science, and he knew all that he needed to know about magic.And then he gets a visit from a talking frog.
Relationships: Kotobuki Reiji & Mikaze Ai, Kotobuki Reiji/Mikaze Ai
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Frogs, Witches, and Naturalists: the impact of human displays of affection on the physical presentation of spelled individuals

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic that I wrote for @PeggingLorenz on Twitter (believe that I had a good laugh about that for a minute) for Utapri Secret Santa 2019 on Twitter.
> 
> Favorite characters: Ai and Reiji
> 
> The prompt: "Something themed like the 'Princess and the Frog,' would be nice, so maybe one of my best boys holding a frog?

In a land that doesn't resemble our own, there was a great temperate forest that spanned hundreds of miles. The forest contained rivers and great tall trees that in some areas shaded out the sun so greatly, only thin beams of light could penetrate the canopy of leaves on a sunny day. In winter, fluffy white snow caked on bare branches and coated the ground, covering the mat of decomposing leaves mixed into the soil.

And in that great forest, dwelled a man who lived in a quaint cabin with a sloping chimney. In the summer, creeping ivy and layers of green moss would cover the stone walls. It was the kind of house that one would see drawn in children’s fairy tale books.

But Ai didn’t exactly believe in fairy tales. He believed in magic, but not fairy tales. And he believed in science. Which, if you didn’t know enough about both of these topics, would seem quite the contradiction.

Ai had dedicated his life to studying the flora and fauna of the forest. He was a self-proclaimed naturalist—self-taught with all the sharp intelligence and quick mind to remember the life cycles of the various species of grasses and mammals and the behavioral patterns of the woodland foxes that dug holes in his front yard.

Ai had filled his modest lodgings with thick leather-bound books filled to the brim with crackling pages of pressed plants and hand drawn diagrams of the bone structures of animals. He even had an extensive collection of star charts, which he was currently using for an experiment on the migration patterns of birds.

He knew much about science, and he knew all that he needed to know about magic to understand that it played by its own set of rules. It could make matter out of nothing. It could change things into other things without any type of reaction. It simply existed. It was older and more powerful than man’s science.

And despite his ever-curious mind, he knew that there were some things in the world that you just didn’t question.

So, when a frog with skin the color of the Spartina grasses that grew in the soggy, oxygen-poor soils near the river and markings that reminded Ai of the magic circles he had seen hanging from the walls of scholars and etched in the pages of books he couldn't read, Ai didn’t question it. He simply sat next to the frog near the pond about a 10-minute walk from his cabin, opened his journal, and began to take notes and draw.

And then the frog opened its mouth and spoke.

* * *

Ai didn’t scream. He wasn't afraid.

He was fascinated.

Ai didn’t waste any time firing off every question that popped into his head. His pencil at the ready. “How are you able to process, understand, and perform human speech? And you speak my language. Who taught you? Are there more like you?”

“D…don’t you want to know my name first? Or, like, anything else?” the frog asked.

Ai’s face twisted in confusion. What a silly thing to ask. “Not really. I have questions that are more important than that right now.”

It looked tired. Ai wasn’t sure how he was able to tell that. Normally, frogs exhibit their own physical tells of stress and agitation through vocalization and rarer cases of self-inflicted damage from fleeing. Sometimes they just stood very, very still. But this frog wasn’t doing anything of the sort. It shivered and switched from leaning on its left hind leg to its right hind leg. Ai poked its side with his pencil and the frog (as frogs do) jumped a little ways away from Ai.

“Hey! Cut that out!” the frog sounded agitated now.

_So, it can express anger as well,_ Ai thought.

“I’ve never seen that kind of patterning on a frog before…” Ai said, more to himself. He twirled his pencil in his fingers, trying to picture the pages of his books on frogs in his mind. He didn’t remember anything helpful.

“Are you going to stare at me all day or will you help me?!” the frog screamed. But it sounded strange, almost guttural, like someone was yelling from just below the surface of a body of water.

“Help you?”

“Yes, I am in great trouble you see.”

“How could you be in any form of 'great trouble?' You’re a _frog._ ”

“Well, I wasn’t always a frog! In fact, I wouldn’t even call myself a frog now! I’m a man— _a human_!”

Well that was silly. He was obviously a frog. Sure, humans and frogs were distantly (very distantly) related and had back bones. Both had four limbs, organs, and complex eyes. But this was not a human.

“This may come as a shock to you—” Ai began, but he was cut off by another one of the frog’s angry shouts.

“I mean I _used_ to be a man! I was spelled! Some witch spelled me and now I look like _this_!” The frog tried to point to himself, but he was a frog. And frogs did not have the capability to do things such as point to themselves. So, he just fell over in the grass.

Ah, so this was a magic thing. That made more sense to Ai. Of course, it would be magic.

“Darn it,” Ai whispered. He thought he'd discovered a new species _._ “Are you one of the forest witch’s animals then? Was she the one that turned you?”

When he needed collection jars or other instruments for research, Ai visited the old witch who had made her home in between two large trees deep in the forest. She would know what he needed as soon as he walked through the door and, with a wave of her gnarled fingers, would make the items appear before her on her work table. She was nice enough and always willing to help Ai identify any plant, animal, or insect that he wasn’t sure about. She didn’t seem the type to spell poor powerless humans.

Ai could see that the frog had tried to shake his head, but instead he just leaned his head closer to the ground.

“I’m a baker in the town that’s a few hours from here. And some witch walks into my shop and asks for a slice of one of my pies. So, I give them one. And then they eat it _right in front of me_ and tell me they didn’t like the crust on it. And, you know, not everyone’s a fan. So, I offered to give them something else and then they got _angry_ and _spelled me into a frog!_ Can you believe that? An eternity as a frog for a lousy piece of pie!”

Ai thought that it did sound quite lousy. He himself was a horrible cook. If he had been in the same situation, he was sure he would have been spelled too.

But there wasn’t anything Ai could do to help the man-turned-frog-person. He couldn’t perform magic. And he didn’t have any books back at his cabin that gave step-by-step instructions on how to undo magic spells.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” Ai said.

"You said there was a witch who lived in this forest, right?"

Ai nodded.

“Well then, do you think she’d know what to do?”

_More than likely she would,_ Ai thought. She seemed to know everything. And because he’d known her for so long, Ai didn’t think she’d be the type to turn him away if he asked for help.

“I can take you to her, if you want,” Ai offered.

“Would you really?! Please?”

Ai needed a few things from the witch anyway. “It’s not that big of a deal. Her cottage isn’t too far from here.”

Making up his mind, Ai set down his hand for the frog—Reiji was the name the frog offered— and placed him on his shoulder.

“You know, I didn’t expect your hands to be so rough. They almost hurt.” Reiji said.

“Keep speaking like that and I’ll chuck you back into the pond.”

“Sorry.”

* * *

When Ai first moved into the forest, he often got lost and had to place markers down everywhere he traveled. But now, many years later, he could walk the path to the witch’s house without actively paying attention. From the pond he passed his own home, then the thicket of dead trees along the bank of the river where the flowing water flooded the nearby soil. Next were the two trees that had somehow grown intertwined like two snakes.

Ai could always tell when he was getting close to the witch’s cottage. First, he noticed the way the air got thinner and his chest lightened. Then it was the way the pollen and dander in the air shimmered. It progressively got dimmer and the many clusters of mushrooms glowed a bright green. The forest appeared to grow wilder. The branches of the trees curled and lengthened of their own accord, preening at being in contact with the witch’s magic.

“This is freaky,” Reiji said from his spot on Ai’s shoulder.

Ai huffed, the closest he'd ever come to laughing. "You're a talking frog; you're just as strange."

When they got closer to the cottage, a stone path appeared before them that lead right up to the front door. The worn wooden door creaked open and Ai could see the candles inside flicker. A once cold and empty-looking house had become alive within a matter of seconds.

Reiji shifted on Ai’s shoulder. Ai could feel him shiver. Maybe after this he would spend some time observing frogs and toads. He was steadily becoming more interested in them.

The old witch was where she always was: seated behind her worktable littered with dusty, half full vials of different colored liquids and canisters with sprigs of herbs. The witch was currently grinding something with her mortar and pestle.

“Come inside and sit. The salve is almost finished,” the old witch said. She halted her grinding to wave her left hand. A seat appeared on the side of the work table nearest Ai and Reiji.

The door creaked shut behind the two. Reiji hopped down from Ai’s shoulder once he had made it to the table to sit down.

“My name is Yuuna by the way, before you ask it, my floppy friend,” The witch, Yuuna, said giving a brief glance at Reiji who was now perched on a corner of the table.

She finished her grinding and poured half of the now powdered contents in a shallow glass dish. She pointed at a bottle across the table filled with a clear liquid with a pearly sheen. Ai pushed it towards her and she snatched it up, uncorked the bottle, and poured a splash of it into the dish with the powder. The contents gave a weak puff of air that created a small spark of light.

“Since I didn’t cast the spell, it’s particularly difficult for me to pinpoint exactly how to help you change back. But lucky for you my specialty is shapeshifting magic,” Yuuna mixed the liquid and the powder with one of her long fingers. "My instincts for reversing spells like this are very good."

“How did you—” Reiji began to say, but Ai finished it for him.

“She just knows things. Better to not question it,” Ai offered. He was staring at the dried plants on the table. There were medical herbs that grew best during the colder months. Ai wasn’t sure how Yuuna got them during this time of year.

“Please pardon him,” Yuuna smiled down at Reiji. “Ai can be a bit callous. Living in solitude has made him a bit stiff. When you have nothing for companionship but books and snake skins, your social skills tend to dwindle.”

“I’ve noticed,” Reiji said. He looked up at Ai and his cheeks bulged with a croak that, judging by the way Reiji seemed to halt in his speech, was entirely unprecedented. “But he did help me get here, so he can’t be all that bad.”

“You don’t need manners to study nature,” Ai said.

Yuuna gave a non-committal hum as she scooped some of the freshly made slave into her hand. She held out her other hand to Reiji who hopped into it. “Well it certainly doesn’t hurt. I bet I’d be able to conjure you more precise measuring equipment and collection jars if you worked on your manners, boy. I govern this entire forest and you can’t even be bothered to hold a conversation with me.”

She slathered the salve onto the brand pattern on Reiji’s bumpy back and murmured a quiet incantation. “It’s begun,” Yuuna told Ai. She held out Reiji to him in her hand “Now, you need to seal it with a kiss.”

Ai paused in his actions. “Why do I have to do it?”

Yuuna face screwed up.

“That’s the face you made at me,” Reiji noted.

“It has to be you because I made the salve with your hair,”

Ai noticed a short bottle with a few strands of light blue hair. “How did you—”

But Yuuna cut him off. “Better to not question it, boy, you said so yourself. Now,” She pushed Reiji into his hands. “One quick kiss and it’ll all be over.”

Ai held Reiji in his hands but kept the frog at arm’s length. In all of his years of research, making physical contact with animals in this fashion had never been necessary. In fact, when studying animals for behavioral reasons, making as little contact as possible. Ai could make as many logical excuses as he wanted, but it all boiled down to just one emotional gut reaction:

Kissing a frog sounded disgusting.

“I swear, if you do this for me, I’ll bake you whatever dessert you want,” Reiji pleaded. His eyes couldn’t be wider than they were, or they’d be bulging. He was pleading.

Ai figured that if Reiji’s horrible baking was what got him into this situation in the first place, then maybe he should stay away from it.

“Hurry, Ai, or the salve will dry out and I’ll have to start again,” Yuuna said.

Ai sighed. There was no getting out of it. He brought Reiji up to his face. Maybe out of respect for Ai and his feelings, Reiji had closed his eyes. Ai appreciated it, but it didn’t really make the situation better. He leaned his head forward and against his better judgment, planted a kiss right on the salve-covered brand on Reiji’s back.

And like when Yuuna spelled Ai’s jars and tools into existence, there was no puff of sparkly smoke. There wasn’t a forcefield of raw energy or anything like that. Instead, Reiji’s slimy body grew hot in his hands, and Ai dropped him with a start when Reiji’s form began to shift.

Reiji’s transformation back into a human reminded Ai of the diagrams of caterpillar dissections that he’d drawn a month ago. What many didn’t know was that caterpillars contained juvenile, undeveloped wings in their bodies once they reached a certain level of maturity. And in this case, Reiji reminded Ai of the period when the wings of a half-formed Lepidopteran began to take form outside the body: spindly and not as elegant as some would believe it to be. Hunched hind legs evolved for jumping straightened, thick brown hair grew from the top of the head, four webbed fingers became five detached fingers. Before long, Reiji in his human form stood before Ai and Yuuna…

…completely naked.

“Oh, _gross!_ I taste frog slime!” Reiji sputtered and spit, completely oblivious to his own indecency.

Ai glared at Reiji. The situation too much for him anymore. “At least you weren’t the one who had to _kiss_ one!”

“Yeah, because I _was_ one! That’s, like, ten times worse.”

Ai could feel the drying, sticky salve on his lips. He wiped at them furiously, hoping to wipe the substance away with the earthy, sour taste of frog skin that was creeping into his mouth.

Yuuna threw a pair of pants at Reiji. The piece of clothing hit the man square in the face. “For the sanity of all of us, please put these on!”

* * *

Months later, Ai found himself balanced precariously on a branch of a tree not too far from the witch’s cottage. He was adding to his notes on changes in the growth patterns of trees in relation to their proximity to magic. Ai believed that he could calculate a threshold of magical stress and pinpoint the closest distance a tree could be before it was affected by the witch’s magic.

He found himself more interested in how magic affected the natural world lately. And mysteriously, the old witch had begun to teach him her magic. When he'd gotten back to his cabin one evening, a large tome filled with ingredient lists and magic circles was placed outside his door.

“A naturalist with a touch of the divine arts, huh? Not bad,” Reiji had said during one of his many visits. He had taken to visiting Ai whenever he had the time to make the journey into the forest.

And judging by how often he tended to visit, Ai figured he had a lot of free time.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me give you a list of the stupid and strange things that influenced this fic:
> 
>   * The prompt 
>   * The opening lines of Ise Monogatari stories 
>   * My proposal for a mock grant to study hypoxia and salt stress on coastal forests 
>   * A conversation with one of my friends about Thranduil from LotR/The Hobbit 
>   * The Witcher 
> 

> 
> It's a little self-indulgent, but I think everything worked out well in the end.
> 
> If anyone needs to get into contact with me, you can find me [@blackrabbit-megapig](http://blackrabbit-megapig.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, but I'm much more active on Twitter [@kurousagi_ojou](https://twitter.com/kurousagi_ojou)


End file.
